CONTENTS

The
splash
pseudo device driver adds support for the splash screen and screen
savers to the kernel.
This driver is required if the splash bitmap image is to be loaded or
any screen saver is to be used.

You can load and display an arbitrary bitmap image file as a welcome banner
on the screen when the system is about to start.
This image will remain on the screen
during kernel initialization process
until the login prompt appears on the screen
or until a screen saver is loaded and initialized.
The image will also disappear if you hit any key,
although this may not work immediately
if the kernel is still probing devices.

If you specify the
-c
or
-v
boot option when loading the kernel, the splash image will not appear.
However, it
is still loaded and can be used as a screen saver later: see below.

In order to display the bitmap, the bitmap file itself and the
matching splash image decoder module must be loaded by the boot loader.
Currently the following decoder modules are available:

splash_bmp.ko

W*ndows BMP file decoder.
While the BMP file format allows images of various color depths, this
decoder currently only handles 256 color bitmaps.
Bitmaps of other color depths will not be displayed.

splash_pcx.ko

ZSoft PCX decoder.
This decoder currently only supports version 5 8-bpp single-plane
images.

splash_txt.ko

TheDraw binary ASCII drawing file decoder.
Displays a text-mode 80x25 ASCII drawing, such as that produced by
the Binary save format in TheDraw.
This format consists of a sequence
of two byte pairs representing the 80x25 display, where the first byte
is the ASCII character to draw and the second byte indicates the
colors/attributes to use when drawing the character.

If the standard VGA video mode is used,
the size of the bitmap must be 320x200 or less.
If you enable the VESA mode support in the kernel,
either by statically linking the VESA module or by loading the VESA module
(see
vga(4)),
you can load bitmaps up to a resolution of 1024x768, depending on the VESA
BIOS and the amount of video memory on the video card.

The screen saver will activate when the system is considered idle: i.e.
when the user has not typed a key or moved the mouse for a specified period
of time.
As the screen saver is an optional module,
it must be explicitly loaded into memory.
Currently the following screen saver modules are available:

blank_saver.ko

This screen saver simply blanks the screen.

beastie_saver.ko

Animated graphical
BSD
Daemon.

daemon_saver.ko

Animated
BSD
Daemon screen saver.

dragon_saver.ko

Draws a random dragon curve.

fade_saver.ko

The screen will gradually fade away.

fire_saver.ko

A fire which becomes higher as load increases.

green_saver.ko

The screen will be blanked, similar to
blank_saver.ko.
If the monitor and the video cards BIOS support it
the screen will also be powered off.

Alternatively, you can set the
saver
variable in the
/etc/rc.conf
to the screen saver of your choice and
the timeout value to the
blanktime
variable so that the screen saver is automatically loaded
and the timeout value is set when the system starts.

The screen saver may be instantly activated by hitting the
saver
key: the defaults are
Shift-Pause
on the AT enhanced keyboard and
Shift-Ctrl-NumLock/Pause
on the AT 84 keyboard.
You can change the
saver
key by modifying the keymap
(see
kbdcontrol(1),
keymap(5)),
and assign the
saver
function to a key of your preference.

If you load a splash image but do not load a screen saver,
you can continue using the splash module as a screen saver.
The screen blanking interval can be specified as described in the
Screen saver
section above.

In order to load the splash screen or the screen saver, you must
have the following line in the kernel configuration file.

device splash

Next, edit
/boot/loader.conf
(see
loader.conf(5))
and include the following lines:

splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/chuck.bmp"

In the above example, the file
/boot/chuck.bmp
is loaded.
In the following example, the VESA module
is loaded so that a bitmap file which cannot be displayed in standard
VGA modes may be shown using one of the VESA video modes.

.An -nosplit
The
splash
driver and this manual page were written by
.An Kazutaka Yokota Aq yokota@FreeBSD.org .
The
splash_bmp
module was written by
.An Michael Smith Aq msmith@FreeBSD.org
and
.An Kazutaka Yokota .
The
splash_pcx
module was written by
.An Dag-Erling Sm\(/orgrav Aq des@FreeBSD.org
based on the
splash_bmp
code.
The
splash_txt
module was written by
.An Antony Mawer Aq antony@mawer.org
based on the
splash_bmp
code, with some additional inspiration from the
daemon_saver
code.
The
logo_saver,
plasma_saver,
rain_saver
and
warp_saver
modules were written by
.An Dag-Erling Sm\(/orgrav Aq Mt des@FreeBSD.org .